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Mon, 19 Nov 2018 20:09:18 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.3Blue + Black Friday > Black Fridayhttp://feeds.ifixit.com/~r/Ifixitorg/~3/Nk7SBWuhq8Y/
https://ifixit.org/blog/12194/blue-and-black-friday/#respondMon, 19 Nov 2018 20:08:43 +0000http://ifixit.org/blog/?p=12194Pssst. We’re having a Blue and Black Friday sale—it’s like Black Friday, but better, because it includes our signature Blue! We just bundled up and marked down all of our most popular Blue and Black tools. So if you happen to have a techie, tool nerd, tinkerer, or DIY-enthusiast on your shopping list, we’ve got a toolkit they probably don’t have—and one they’ll definitely love.

And don’t forget about yourself! After all that generosity, you deserve a treat too—here’s your chance to win a bundle of your own. We’re so thankful to work with such a fantastic fixer community, that we’re celebrating by giving away ten of our seasonal Blue and Black bundles.

Want in? Of course you do! Just tell us what you would fix with our tools by tagging a post with @iFixit and the hashtag #BlueAndBlack.

What are we looking for?

We’re looking for great posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that show us why you need our tools. Bonus points for creativity. And singing—we love when people sing. Enter as many times as you want! The more entries, the better. We’ll be admiring, sharing, and eventually picking 10 of our favorites at the end of the month. Winners will be announced on our blog November 30th.

]]>https://ifixit.org/blog/12194/blue-and-black-friday/feed/0https://ifixit.org/blog/12194/blue-and-black-friday/Behind Blue and Black: Our identity, explainedhttp://feeds.ifixit.com/~r/Ifixitorg/~3/g3A9kv9P4U4/
https://ifixit.org/blog/12196/behind-blue-and-black/#respondSat, 17 Nov 2018 14:00:47 +0000http://ifixit.org/blog/?p=12196My favorite tool is a pipe wrench from my grandfather. Yesterday, while I was repairing my well and installing some pipe, the patina of wear in the red paint really struck me. That chip could have happened while he was running an irrigation pipe on his ranch, or fixing a sink with my mother. Because that wrench is so well-made, that tool is now intertwined with my family’s story—and I’d sooner give up my car than that red wrench.

I like to think about tools as extensions of ourselves, enabling us to accomplish things that we couldn’t without them. Great tools become treasured—partly because quality is hard to find, and partly because the more we use a tool, the more its story becomes enmeshed with our own.

I’ve spent a lot of time tinkering with electronics, and my view of the work has been changed by the tools I use. Just like a quality lens can improve the way you see the world, a quality tool can change the relationship you have with your stuff. A good tool can transform you from a consumer into a participant, connecting you to the things you own in a more dynamic, and more enduring, way.

We adhere to that same philosophy when we design our tools at iFixit. Each tool is carefully engineered in San Luis Obispo, California, located midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Our headquarters are just a short drive from the Pacific Ocean. And our oceanic roots helped inspire our tool design—you can see a subtle splash of our signature Blue in each tool that we create.

Reverse-engineered for quality

Value, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. But, we have three standard quality measures that we strive for in every flagship Blue and Black tool.

Well-engineered: Every member of our tool design team has a formal engineering background, and each of them started as a teardown engineer here at iFixit. They’ve seen the guts of more gadgets than anyone we know, making them best-suited for the task of designing how to get into them.

Precision-crafted: Our journey to create a new bit starts and ends with a microscope. Each bit is CNC-machined to extreme tolerances. Our pentalobe drivers are just 0.9 mm in diameter at the tip, and each lobe is 0.18 mm. Crafting the testing-tooling alone to verify quality is expensive and time-consuming, but it’s that obsession with quality that truly sets our tools apart.

Designed by humans, for humans: When we first started teaching repair workshops, we’d watch people struggle to get enough force onto the screwhead, accidentally stripping screws. That’s a design problem—so we vowed to spend the extra time to test our designs with the people who would actually be wielding them. And we’ve forged our driver handles with them in mind.

But quality is only half the battle—our color palette is just as integral to our design process.

Behind the Blue and Black

Selecting Blue and Black to paint our tools was very intentional. Blue is a subtle nod to our oceanic roots, and Black symbolizes rebellion. Empowerment. We use our tools to open-source everyone’s hardware, whether they like it or not. When Apple started using the Pentalobe screw back in 2009, no one had a driver to get past it. So we made a driver of our own—and then we made it available to the masses. Because that’s what tinkerers do. We problem-solve. We fix. And we don’t take broken for an answer. That’s also why our logo is a Phillips screw—because it represents freedom. Together, Blue and Black are more than just two colors—they’re our identity.

Our color scheme pervades our product line, which includes Blue-capped Black driver handles nested in Blue-lined Black foam. Getting the exact shade of iFixit Blue out of anodized aluminum is a challenge (it’s Pantone 285 C, by the way). Doing it consistently is even harder. When we were looking for a manufacturer for our tools, we sent color-calibrated cards to all of our prospective factories to make sure they could match our brand. Because it’s imperative that when you see one of our tools, even at a distance, you recognize the iFixit Blue and Black.

Our latest toolkits, the Manta Driver Kit and the Mahi Driver Kit, along with the Mako 64-Bit Driver Kit and our Marlin Screwdriver Sets, draw on the imagery of the sea and the strength of its creatures. The Manta Ray adapted their winged anatomy for survival. The Mahi are now among the world’s fastest growing fish. Every iteration in gadget design has required us to change our approach to tool design. And that’s fine with us—because just like our friends in the sea, we love evolving.

You didn’t choose to be a fixer because it was easy—you’re a fixer because you believe that you should be able to fix, hack, mod, and do whatever you damn well please with your stuff. That’s why you should wield your Blue and Black tools with pride. Because they’re built with the same level of integrity we look for in the devices we take apart. So the next time you go to repair your favorite gadget, build out your PC mod, or tackle that tricky household project, look for Blue and Black—the colors of iFixit quality.

]]>https://ifixit.org/blog/12196/behind-blue-and-black/feed/0https://ifixit.org/blog/12196/behind-blue-and-black/iPad Pro 11” Teardown: The adhesive strikes backhttp://feeds.ifixit.com/~r/Ifixitorg/~3/TvkWzAlv8-o/
https://ifixit.org/blog/12164/ipad-pro-11-teardown/#commentsMon, 12 Nov 2018 17:37:34 +0000http://ifixit.org/blog/?p=12164We just plucked the last device from the Apple tree this season—the iPad Pro 11”. At first bite, we can’t tell if it’s a good apple, or a bad one. Apple replaced last year’s Lightning port with a fully modular USB-C port—a huge win for repair. But four of the eight speakers are epoxied into the case, making them completely unreplaceable. And while the battery has repair-friendly stretch-release adhesive with twelve pull tabs, a final bit of tough conventional adhesive stymies what should be an easy battery replacement.

It’s obvious that Apple is trying to change, but it looks like the voice on the other shoulder was a little louder than the repairability angel this time around. That said, this late 2018 batch of products has surprised us, and we are cautiously optimistic that they just might be starting to care about the insides of their devices as much as the outsides again.

You’re probably not planning to shuck your new Apple Pencil, so we de-cased ours in the name of science. We found an entire capacitive grid wrapped around the body. This is likely used to register tap inputs, but this grid ought to help the Pencil know where—not just when—you tap. Could more complex gestures be on the way?

This iPad’s 29.45 Wh battery is a slight downgrade from the 30.8 Wh pack in the 10.5″ iPad Pro, and a lot smaller than the most recent Microsoft Surface Pro’s 45 Wh battery.

The iPad Pro 11″ earns a 3 out of 10 on our repairability scale—which is still a failing grade, but moves the needle in the right direction.

]]>https://ifixit.org/blog/12164/ipad-pro-11-teardown/feed/2https://ifixit.org/blog/12164/ipad-pro-11-teardown/Mac mini: Return of the upgradeable RAMhttp://feeds.ifixit.com/~r/Ifixitorg/~3/7fxJEJNHhhA/
https://ifixit.org/blog/12138/mac-mini-2018-teardown/#respondFri, 09 Nov 2018 14:00:01 +0000http://ifixit.org/blog/?p=121382018 is the year of the Mac, and Apple has finally maxed out their much-loved Mac mini with a monster upgrade. Removable RAM, oodles of ports, and a serious fan make us wonder why this mini didn’t earn a “Pro” moniker. Back in the good old days, a Pro Mac was a Mac you could configure, upgrade, and connect to your heart’s content. The dismal Pro notebook line has strayed from the light in recent years, but these late 2018 devices are starting to make us feel a little hopeful again.

The revived mini’s SO-DIMM announcement was met with cheers, and our users are so excited that they already mocked up a 2018 mini RAM replacement guide. We took the liberty of updating the user guide with some teardown pics, so you too can upgrade your brand new mini. Stay tuned for the official guide and upgrade kits!

When we don’t see the right holes for prying with a Mac mini logic board removal tool, we try some good old-fashioned thumb pressing. It looks like this time around you won’t be needing a tool!

The RAM is held captive under a perforated shield. Also seen in older iMacs, this EMI cage lets the memory sticks operate at a high frequency without interfering with other device functions.

Alas, the processor and storage remain firmly rooted on the logic board, as do those many lovely ports. If any one of those breaks, it’s taking the whole logic board with it. In the end, the mini earned a 6/10 repairability score.

]]>https://ifixit.org/blog/12138/mac-mini-2018-teardown/feed/0https://ifixit.org/blog/12138/mac-mini-2018-teardown/MacBook Air: A New Hopehttp://feeds.ifixit.com/~r/Ifixitorg/~3/3SDAnrhph8U/
https://ifixit.org/blog/12128/macbook-air-2018-teardown/#respondThu, 08 Nov 2018 17:00:40 +0000http://ifixit.org/blog/?p=12128Apple may have taken forever to update their beloved MacBook Air, but this throwback was worth the wait. Under that eco-friendly (but still only pre-consumer) recycled aluminum, this Air rocks modular ports, and not one but ten pull-to-remove adhesive tabs securing its battery and speakers. After years of declining repairability, this is a refreshing change for Apple notebooks.

But don’t go thinking Apple has gone soft on us. These design improvements have more to do with rework than repairability. The Air still uses external pentalobes to keep you out, requires lots of component removal for common fixes, and both RAM and storage are soldered to the logic board. All together, that means Apple has an easy time with their knowledge and tools, but the average DIYer is left out to dry when it comes to upgrades. We’re not ones to complain (okay, yes we are), but we hope this is just the beginning of an upswing in repairable design.

The Air comes equipped with a 49.9 Wh battery—compared to other ultraportables, that’s slightly smaller than Dell’s XPS 13 (52 Wh) but larger than HP’s upcoming Spectre (43.7 Wh). That said, the Air’s competition boasts equal (or better) battery life while also running faster, more power-intensive Intel U-series processors.

In one unfortunate regression, the trackpad is now less accessible than ever, sharing a keyboard flex cable that’s pinned under the logic board. But hey, at least it’s still modular.

While we’re pleasantly surprised by the Air’s relative repairability (compared to recent Apple notebooks), fixed storage and RAM are still a bummer on a pricey laptop. All things considered, the MacBook Air earns a 3/10 repairability score.

]]>https://ifixit.org/blog/12128/macbook-air-2018-teardown/feed/0https://ifixit.org/blog/12128/macbook-air-2018-teardown/#VoidIfRemoved Contest Winners—Part 2http://feeds.ifixit.com/~r/Ifixitorg/~3/rix0ovMd-Ys/
https://ifixit.org/blog/12011/voidifremoved-winners-2/#commentsWed, 31 Oct 2018 12:00:59 +0000http://ifixit.org/blog/?p=12011A couple weeks ago, consumer rights group U.S. PIRG released a study reporting that 45 out of 50 manufacturers void warranties if their products have undergone third-party repair. This, of course, is not only rude but illegal—and we’ve been galvanizing our online community to hold offending companies accountable.

Back in April, when the FTC sent letters to six manufacturers condemning their use of illicit ‘warranty void’ stickers, we hosted a subsequent sticker hunt to really drive home their message. But apparently that didn’t scare them enough—so we decided to give them another fright by re-opening our #VoidIfRemoved contest. You guys sure showed us that you weren’t ready to give up the good fight, and at last, on this All Hallows’ Eve, we have our winners!

Thank you to everyone who participated! We’ve gathered all of your submissions to send to the FTC. Now enjoy the rest of your Halloween knowing that you helped us pull off the biggest fright of them all.

]]>https://ifixit.org/blog/12011/voidifremoved-winners-2/feed/2https://ifixit.org/blog/12011/voidifremoved-winners-2/New iPhone XR teardown wallpapers are herehttp://feeds.ifixit.com/~r/Ifixitorg/~3/tpdd22u3e-o/
https://ifixit.org/blog/11982/iphone-xr-teardown-wallpapers/#commentsTue, 30 Oct 2018 21:08:33 +0000http://ifixit.org/blog/?p=11982Apple just brought their latest bundle of iPhone joy into the family: the iPhone XR. So, as to be expected, we’re bringing you our newest set of teardown wallpapers. Hiding behind that fancy new Liquid Retina display is some seriously cool engineering—and now, you can oggle at your gadget’s guts all day long!

So you want to turn your iPhone XR inside out? Great—here’s how:

For best results, navigate to this blog post on your phone. Find the image you want as your wallpaper and click on the photo for the full resolution. Then, save the image on to your phone. You can set the wallpaper from “Wallpapers” in your phone’s Settings—“Choose a New Wallpaper” lists your recent photos, including downloads.

You can choose “Still” or “Perspective” (but since you didn’t ask, I think “Still” looks better.)

Click the photos below for the full resolution image.

iPhone XR wallpapers:

Bonus iPhone XR X-ray wallpaper:

And if these wallpapers weren’t enough to satiate your appetite for iPhone guts, you can always check out our full iPhone XR teardown, too.

]]>https://ifixit.org/blog/11982/iphone-xr-teardown-wallpapers/feed/10https://ifixit.org/blog/11982/iphone-xr-teardown-wallpapers/iPhones are Allergic to Heliumhttp://feeds.ifixit.com/~r/Ifixitorg/~3/WoEjvbe9Z_c/
https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium/#commentsTue, 30 Oct 2018 19:16:58 +0000http://ifixit.org/blog/?p=11986This is the kind of tale that you don’t hear every day. Erik Wooldridge is a Systems Specialist at Morris Hospital near Chicago. During the installation of a new GE Healthcare MRI machine, he started getting calls that cell phones weren’t working. Then, some Apple Watches started glitching.

“My immediate thought was that the MRI must have emitted some sort of EMP, in which case we could be in a lot of trouble.” But an electromagnetic pulse would have taken out medical equipment in the facility as well, and they were working fine! He started investigating, and learned that every single impacted device was made by Apple—the technician’s Android phones were fine. And it was a wide-sweeping issue, impacting 40 different devices. What the heck?

I’ve seen a lot of strange glitches in my time, and I’ve never heard of something like this. Neither had Erik. “The behavior of the devices was pretty odd. Most of them were completely dead. I plugged them in to the wall and had no indication that the device was charging. The other devices that were powering on seemed to have issues with the cellular radio. The wifi connection was consistent and fast, but cellular was very hit or miss.”

That’s when he posted the issue to Reddit, where other sysadmins speculated that it might be caused by the liquid helium used to cool the MRI machine. So he investigated, and found there was a helium leak at the same time that vented into the building.

“I discovered that the helium leakage occurred while the new magnet was being ramped [down to cool it]. Approximately 120 liters of liquid [helium] were vented over the course of 5 hours. There was a vent in place that was functioning, but there must have been a leak. The MRI room is not on an isolated HVAC loop, so it shares air with most or all of the facility. We do not know how much of the 120 liters ended up going outdoors and how much ended up inside. Helium expands about 750 times when it expands from a liquid to a gas, so that’s a lot of helium (90,000 L of gaseous He).” I bet the nurse’s voices were higher pitched that day!

The devices started to slowly recover after the initial incident, but not completely. “We did have a few abnormal devices. One iPhone had severe service issues after the incident, and some of the [Apple Watches] remained on, but the touch screens weren’t working (even after several days.)”

He performed some triage, categorizing devices by type. “Models of iPhones and Apple Watches afflicted were iPhone 6 and higher, and Apple Watch Series 0 and higher. There was only one iPhone 5 in the building that we know of and it was not impacted in any way. The question at the time was: What occurred that would only cause Apple devices to stop working?”

This piqued my interest, and I reached out to some friends that make ‘MEMS’ silicon. These microelectromechanical systems are some of the smallest mechanical apparatuses in the world. Every phone has gyroscopes and accelerometers with micrometer-thin elements. My initial theory, shared by some on Reddit, was that the helium molecules were small enough to get inside these vacuum-sealed chips and interfere with the mechanical workings.

But there are two problems with this idea: One, Apple isn’t alone in using MEMS gyroscopes—every phone has them. Why weren’t the Android phones affected? Perhaps there’s a bug in iOS that causes crashes when it gets faulty data from the gyro? But the bug impacted Apple Watches, too—and they run WatchOS. Additionally, iPhones earlier than the 6 weren’t affected. It seems unlikely that this was a new software bug that impacted both iOS and WatchOS.

So what else could it be? Well, at the heart of every electronic device is a clock. Traditionally, these are quartz oscillators, crystals that vibrate at a specific predictable frequency—generally 32 kHz. When they were first invented, they enabled the first digital ‘quartz’ watches. Now, these frequency generators are at the heart of every electronic device.

Without a clock, the system stands still. The CPU flat out doesn’t work. The clock is literally the heartbeat of a modern device.

But quartz oscillators have some problems. They don’t keep time as well at high (and low) temperatures, and they’re a relatively large component—1×3 mm or so. In their quest for smaller and smaller hardware, Apple has recently started using MEMS timing oscillators from a specialized company called SiTime to replace quartz components.

A MEMS oscillator, as seen through an electron microscope.

Specifically, they’re using the SiT512, ‘the world’s smallest, lowest power 32 kHz oscillator.’ And if the MEMS device was susceptible to helium intrusion, that could be our culprit!

A failing oscillator would match Erik’s symptoms, which he reproduced in an experiment. “I placed an iPhone 8 Plus in a sealed bag and filled it with helium. This wasn’t incredibly realistic, as the original iPhones would have been exposed to a much lower concentration, but it still supports the idea that helium can disable the device. In the video I leave the display on and running a stopwatch for the duration of the test. Around 8 minutes and 20 seconds in the phone locks up. Nothing crazy really happens. The clock just stops, and nothing else. The display did stay on though.”

I was able to repeat his experiment in our lab. My iPhone 8 lasted about four minutes in a helium atmosphere before it shut off entirely.

Sure enough, Apple’s user guide for the iPhone and Apple watch admits this is a problem:

“Exposing iPhone to environments having high concentrations of industrial chemicals, including near evaporating liquified gasses such as helium, may damage or impair iPhone functionality. … If your device has been affected and shows signs of not powering on, the device can typically be recovered. Leave the unit unconnected from a charging cable and let it air out for approximately one week. The helium must fully dissipate from the device, and the device battery should fully discharge in the process. After a week, plug your device directly into a power adapter and let it charge for up to one hour. Then the device can be turned on again.” (Emphasis added.)

Hydrogen and helium are notoriously hard to contain because their molecules are so small. It sounds like this is a problem that SiTime has been working to solve for a while. I found this on their FAQ, “How effective is the hermetic seal of MEMS oscillators?”

“Previous generations of EpiSeal resonators may have been impacted by large concentrations of small-molecule gas. Newer EpiSeal resonators are impervious to all small-molecule gases. Please contact SiTime in case you are planning to use a SiTime device in large concentrations of small-molecule gas, so that we can recommend an appropriate, immune part.” (Emphasis added again.)

I was curious if this would impact other kinds of MEMS devices, so I reached out to InvenSense Motion, the company who makes the image stabilizing chip in the Pixel 3. David Almoslino, their Senior Director of Corporate Marketing, confirmed that it was an issue. He told me that their products “can be somewhat susceptible to helium. Helium can diffuse through the fusion bond oxide and cause the cavity pressure to increase. In our pressure sensors, helium could cause the absolute accuracy to temporarily degrade. In our gyro sensors, helium could cause the offset to drift and could cause the oscillation to temporarily stop. In any [accelerometer] sensors, helium should have very little impact. All our InvenSense parts should recover once removed from any helium environment.”

Of course, the reason that you’ve never heard of this before is because it’s such a rare situation. But silicon manufacturers are aware of it and do what they can to minimize the problem. David told me that “A helium leak test is a pretty standard MEMS test done by most companies to assess vacuum packages.”

So that’s it! Like an incredibly tiny grain of sand, the helium molecules are small enough to get inside the device, physically stop the clock, and turn your phone temporarily into a paperweight.

]]>https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium/feed/68https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium/The iPhone XR is the lost iPhone 9 you’ve been looking forhttp://feeds.ifixit.com/~r/Ifixitorg/~3/GF6POmokPcY/
https://ifixit.org/blog/11976/the-iphone-xr-is-the-lost-iphone-9-youve-been-looking-for/#commentsFri, 26 Oct 2018 22:42:38 +0000http://ifixit.org/blog/?p=11976If you’re wondering what happened to the iPhone 9, we found it: It’s masquerading as the iPhone XR. A peek under the hood revealed design hallmarks reminiscent of both the iPhone 8 and X. Most notably, the iPhone XR returned to a single-decker logic board—a pre-X-series design—although the board is vaguely rectangular like its recent brethren. And after all the L-shaped battery shenanigans, we’re back to an old-school, bar-shaped, single-cell battery. If it ain’t broke…

But the XR isn’t all throwback—it’s got the latest silicon, and contains features entirely new to iPhones. We found Apple’s first-ever modular SIM reader, possibly there to help with their newfangled multi-SIM plans. Also, it’s blue.

The XR’s battery punches above its weight—its single-cell rectangle weighs in at a whopping 11.16 Wh. While it’s not as big as the XS Max (12.08 Wh), it is still very respectable considering it has fewer pixels to push.

The new “misaligned” Lightning port looks to be a symptom of the thicker display assembly. The LCD is less pricey, but its need for a backlight makes it bigger—which may have perturbed the port symmetry.

All told, the iPhone XR earned a 6/10 on our repairability scale. The display-first opening procedure and easy access to the battery remain design priorities for Apple—making the two most common repairs easier than almost any Android counterpart.

]]>https://ifixit.org/blog/11976/the-iphone-xr-is-the-lost-iphone-9-youve-been-looking-for/feed/6https://ifixit.org/blog/11976/the-iphone-xr-is-the-lost-iphone-9-youve-been-looking-for/Copyright Office Ruling Issues Sweeping Right to Repair Reformshttp://feeds.ifixit.com/~r/Ifixitorg/~3/Jd5IomOu3FU/
https://ifixit.org/blog/11951/1201-copyright-final-rule/#commentsThu, 25 Oct 2018 18:46:08 +0000http://ifixit.org/blog/?p=11951Six months ago, on a sunny spring day in LA, I donned a suit—a rare event—and walked into a courtroom at UCLA. With me were Robert Miranda, a 24-year-old entrepreneur who runs an Xbox and smartphone repair shop in the desert town of Barstow, California, and Matt Zieminski, one of the better iPhone repair technicians in the world.

We were there to petition for the freedom to tinker. There’s an obscure aspect of copyright law that is being abused by big manufacturers to take away our ability to fix things. In 2001, Sina Khanifar, a young entrepreneur, was sued by a cell phone manufacturer citing section 1201 of the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Simply stated, 1201 makes it illegal to ‘circumvent’ locks put on products by the manufacturer without permission. It shifts control of our products from us, the owners, to the original makers of the equipment. This law has been a significant contributor to the steady erosion of ownership rights.

Fortunately, Congress built an escape hatch into section 1201, allowing citizens to petition for exemptions to the extraordinarily broad law. So, every three years, someone has to go and ask for the right to tinker with our stuff. I’m that someone—that’s why I was in LA.

On behalf of the iFixit community, I came to ask for permission to circumvent digital locks in order to fix our stuff. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Along with Robert and Matt representing Repair.org, I was joined by Cynthia Replogle, iFixit’s rockstar lawyer. And Cory Doctorow, Kit Walsh, and Mitch Stoltz from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as Jay ‘Saurik’ Freeman of Cydia iPhone jailbreaking fame. We also had help from Jef Pearlman and his team of students from Stanford’s IP law clinic. Our allies were met with opposition from a variety of moneyed and acronymed interests—the MPAA, RIAA, and the Auto Alliance, to name a few.

Over three full days in LA, we were grilled by the Copyright Office. They wanted details on how cell phone baseband processors work, how automotive telematics systems are different from OBD II diagnostics, why you can’t simply swap in a new Blu-ray drive into an Xbox, and so forth. It was exhausting—for us and for them. But they had done their homework, and asked intelligent questions on a startling variety of topics.

The final ruling was released today, along with 342 pages of background. Our work, and that of our allies, was cited extensively. The Copyright Office clearly understands the frustration that the repair community is experiencing. In the introduction to their ruling, they include this quote, “[i]t’s my own damn car, I paid for it, I should be able to repair it or have the person of my choice do it for me.”

Unlike past rulings, this goes into effect immediately. Well, almost immediately. The new rules are the law of the land as of this Sunday, October 28. So let’s break it down, and talk about what’s illegal today that will be kosher come Sunday. (Oh, and here’s the decision from 2015 for comparison.)

Major new freedoms:

You can now jailbreak Alexa-powered hardware, and other similar gadgets—they call these ‘Voice assistant devices.’

You can unlock new phones, not just used ones. This is important for recyclers that get unopened consumer returns.

Repair of motorized land vehicles (including tractors) by modifying the software is now legal. Importantly, this includes access to telematic diagnostic data—which was a major point of contention.

It’s now legal for third-parties to perform repair on behalf of the owner. This is hugely important for the American economy, where repair jobs represent 3% of overall employment.

The ruling was not without some bad news:

Our game console repair petition was denied, meaning repairs of PS4 and Xbox One systems are going to stay expensive.

Products that are not ‘smartphones, home appliances, or home systems’ or ‘motorized land vehicles’ are excluded. So boat and airplane owners are still out of luck.

An exemption request by Bunnie Huang and EFF to bypass HDCP, the copy protection on HDMI for the purposes of expanding the TV ecosystem was denied.

We are going to continue to have trouble making repair options available for Xbox and Playstation optical drives because they’re cryptographically programmed at the factory. We asked for the ability to pair a replacement drive with an existing console. But the Copyright Office declined, stating that ‘in many cases, manufacturer repair services will be widely available and adequate.’ On behalf of gamers in rural communities around the country, I respectfully disagree.

Taylor Swift and Telematics

You may find this hard to believe, but one major point of discussion at the hearing was whether letting people repair cars and tractors would allow them to pirate music and movies using the vehicle’s entertainment systems. In their 2015 filing, John Deere speculated that farmers might pirate Taylor Swift music using their equipment. Fortunately, the Copyright Office saw through that argument:

Most of opponents’ concerns, while significant, primarily relate to accessing entertainment works through vehicle entertainment systems and related subscription services, not to repairing more functional software installed to facilitate vehicle operation, which may require bypassing TPMs that incidentally protect entertainment systems.

This Ruling is not a Panacea

With those few exceptions, the Copyright Office went as far as they could in granting access to the repair community. There are still significant limits, though, that will need to be addressed by Congress.

One of those being the law against ‘trafficking’ in circumvention tools. From today’s filing, “limiting the exemption to individual owners threatens to render it effectively meaningless for those who lack the technical knowledge to access and manipulate increasingly complex embedded computer systems.” Now that circumvention is required to perform repairs, and most repairs benefit from tools, we need to open up a market for developing and selling those tools. Legislation like Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren’s Unlocking Technology Act would provide the clarity that tool developers need. It would also be helpful for service providers to codify the ability of third-parties to perform service.

A Groundbreaking Decision

Nowadays, just about everything has software. Your ability to fix and maintain the products you own is contingent on being able to modify that software. But our tooling hasn’t kept up. For fear of prosecution, farmers and independent mechanics haven’t developed their own software tools to maintain their equipment. Now, they can.

This ruling doesn’t make that tooling available to the public—we’re going to need actual Right to Repair legislation for that. But it does make it legal to make your own tools. And that’s a huge step in the right direction.

This is a sweeping victory. It’s the result of years of careful, painstakingly detailed work by the community. So pop a celebratory bottle, or maybe pop open a piece of household hardware this Sunday—we did it!

The Fine Print

For those of you that want to put on your amateur-lawyer hat, here’s the full text of the exemptions that are relevant to hardware tinkerers:

(5) Computer programs that enable the following types of lawfully acquired wireless devices to connect to a wireless telecommunications network, when circumvention is undertaken solely in order to connect to a wireless telecommunications network and such connection is authorized by the operator of such network

(iv) Wearable wireless devices designed to be worn on the body, such as smartwatches or fitness devices.

(6) Computer programs that enable smartphones and portable all-purpose mobile computing devices to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the smartphone or device, or to permit removal of software from the smartphone or device. For purposes of this paragraph (b)(6), a “portable all-purpose mobile computing device” is a device that is primarily designed to run a wide variety of programs rather than for consumption of a particular type of media content, is equipped with an operating system primarily designed for mobile use, and is intended to be carried or worn by an individual.

(7) Computer programs that enable smart televisions to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the smart television.

(8) Computer programs that enable voice assistant devices to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the device, or to permit removal of software from the device, and is not accomplished for the purpose of gaining unauthorized access to other copyrighted works. For purposes of this paragraph (b)(8), a “voice assistant device” is a device that is primarily designed to run a wide variety of programs rather than for consumption of a particular type of media content, is designed to take user input primarily by voice, and is designed to be installed in a home or office.

(9) Computer programs that are contained in and control the functioning of a lawfully acquired motorized land vehicle such as a personal automobile, commercial vehicle, or mechanized agricultural vehicle, except for programs accessed through a separate subscription service, when circumvention is a necessary step to allow the diagnosis, repair, or lawful modification of a vehicle function, where such circumvention does not constitute a violation of applicable law, including without limitation regulations promulgated by the Department of Transportation or the Environmental Protection Agency, and is not accomplished for the purpose of gaining unauthorized access to other copyrighted works.

(10) Computer programs that are contained in and control the functioning of a lawfully acquired smartphone or home appliance or home system, such as a refrigerator, thermostat, HVAC, or electrical system, when circumvention is a necessary step to allow the diagnosis, maintenance, or repair of such a device or system, and is not accomplished for the purpose of gaining access to other copyrighted works. For purposes of this paragraph (b)(10):

(i) The “maintenance” of a device or system is the servicing of the device or system in order to make it work in accordance with its original specifications and any changes to those specifications authorized for that device or system; and

(ii) The “repair” of a device or system is the restoring of the device or system to the state of working in accordance with its original specifications and any changes to those specifications authorized for that device or system.

(11)

(i) Computer programs, where the circumvention is undertaken on a lawfully acquired device or machine on which the computer program operates, or is undertaken on a computer, computer system, or computer network on which the computer program operates with the authorization of the owner or operator of such computer, computer system, or computer network, solely for the purpose of good-faith security research and does not violate any applicable law, including without limitation the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.

(ii) For purposes of this paragraph (b)(11), “good-faith security research” means accessing a computer program solely for purposes of good-faith testing, investigation, and/or correction of a security flaw or vulnerability, where such activity is carried out in an environment designed to avoid any harm to individuals or the public, and where the information derived from the activity is used primarily to promote the security or safety of the class of devices or machines on which the computer program operates, or those who use such devices or machines, and is not used or maintained in a manner that facilitates copyright infringement.

(14) Computer programs that operate 3D printers that employ microchip- reliant technological measures to limit the use of feedstock, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of using alternative feedstock and not for the purpose of accessing design software, design files, or proprietary data.